


War of Words

by Ericine



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Reality, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Space, Banter, Covert Operation, Diplomacy, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Kendra gets the respect she deserves, Outer Space, Spaceships, Trafficking, Vagueness is Your Friend, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-30
Updated: 2015-11-30
Packaged: 2018-05-04 05:20:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5321948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ericine/pseuds/Ericine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In an alternate timeline, Earth is just one of several players struggling to stay afloat after years of intergalactic war. Journalism is a job performed by robots, but diplomacy is a delicate exercise. Journalists have made lateral moves into the field and are often known as communication specialists. The News Night team gets sent for a simple ship-to-ship negotiation, and their actions may change the future forever. It's showtime in space. (Prompt: Will/Mac, Space AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	War of Words

**Author's Note:**

  * For [recycledstars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/recycledstars/gifts).



> I got sent this prompt AGES ago, and it only seemed right to churn it out around the holidays as part of the fandom gifting I'm doing. I really, really hope you like it, because I knew that it would never be the three-sentence story the prompt asked for, but this AU was also quite challenging, and I ended up playing around with the show-don't-tell rule in a rather shameful way. I've never worldbuilt to quite this extent with an AU, but I hope you appreciate my efforts. It's my gift.

The time difference between Earth and Quintessellate-V (or what looks like Quintessellate-V—it could be any number of those beach-climate planets in the Nandifang Sector) is a good nine hours, and that’s without factoring in the fact that the days there are 16-hours long, but Mackenzie McHale is willing to bet her entire collection of exorbitantly expensive Mars-style business casual on the fact that Charlie Skinner gives negative fucks about any of that, given that he’s vid-conferencing her in shades and swim trunks.

And—yes, those are definitely diamonds raining down in the background. The bastard.

“Obviously, I’m sending in the best crew for the job,” he tells her, “and that’s why I’m calling you.” Mac tries not to look at the sparkle glimmering in the background, marking a square-shaped space around Charlie’s beach chair. A selective climate-controlled beach planet, then. Definitely Quintessellate-V. “You know the drill—temporary space-level commission. Most of your staff has decided to be trendy and gotten some type of space certification, so we’ll have to import very little crew. It’s a purely diplomatic mission, though.”

“If it’s a diplomatic mission, then I’m confused as to why you couldn’t send a space team with ambassadors. We’re a news crew—a news crew undergoing significant restructuring for the intergalactic stage, granted—and I appreciate the vote of confidence, but, frankly—“

“Please do be frank, Mac. I’m so sick and tired of hearing people _yammer—“_

“—how in the _hell_ are we equipped to handle this?” She gestures to her comm device. “This report says that this race has 72-hour sleep cycles, which means they’re going to spend a lot of time waiting around, or we’re going to have to alternate crews and switch back and forth. That’s not exactly consistent."

“We need particular attention to detail paid to language on this one. We need to ink a trade deal, but there are suspicions that they’re doing some kind of human—I mean, they’re not exactly _human_ —they’re some other alien race, but you know what I mean—trafficking. We need to make sure they’re not doing that, but it needs to take place within the trade agreement.”

“Computer, brew coffee,” Mac says. The way this sounds, she’s not sleeping tonight. She’s probably not sleeping until it’s over. “You want to bring in Will.”

“Is that going to be a problem?”

“Oh, sweet _Jesus_ , get out of the way. You’re hogging the ultraviolet shower.” Charlie scoots aside, grumbling, and Leona Lansing appears on her screen, wearing some kind of long fringe beach thing. “Mac—Mac, you look tired. Have you been eating enough?”

“Well, it’s pretty early in the morning—”

“That was rhetorical. Get the old crew together. Will runs point. That other crew of yours can work while you’re sleeping. Show up on day 2 of their awake cycle, and you can have it done in four 12-hour shifts. Take the former recon guy as your pilot. Leave those charmingly Midwestern children of yours on the ground, and take some interns with you to do some grunt work. Also, take Sabbith with you. She studied these people’s economy during a fellowship or some shit, and I get the feeling that if I split you people up too much, you get lonely or something equally as useless.”

“I’ll start now.”

“Relax a little first. You young people are so tense. Get some more coffee. Take a shower.” She pauses and squints at Mac. “Get a facial. You’re not going to get a chance for about a week. I need you rested, because so help me, if I have to come back early because of this—”

“Enjoy your vacation,” replies Mac.

“We’re not on va—” protests Charlie, and the comm cuts off.

* * *

“Jim, this idea’s crazy.”

“There’s no precedent for it,” says Jim distractedly, punching commands into the tablet console. “That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t do it. It’s kind of a good idea.”

“A good crazy idea.”

Jim turns around and meets her eyes. “I never said it wasn’t crazy.” Maggie grins.

“I wish I was going.”

“You’re still getting certified for space travel. Besides, here, you’ll still get to stay up all night.” Jim cocks his head toward the computers.

“Right. Research. I know.”

“Better look more enthusiastic when Mac comes in. McAvoy’s not going to take kindly to having to stay up for hours on end conducting alien nego—”

_“Oh, for bloody’s sake, Billy, get your head out of your ass!”_

“Mac’s here,” says Jim.

* * *

They hold the staff meeting on route (in the pilot's cabin because the pilot can't leave the room, and the pilot's cabin is naturally the smallest room on the ship--bathrooms are bigger) because, according to Will, they’re “burning daylight.” Neal had started to explain that that was impossible, given that they were, literally, traveling through _space_ , but Mac had tossed him a tired sort of look.

He’d returned to his console.

“Neal, you’re going to need to pay a little more attention,” says Mac. “Sloan’s giving us important background information that we need to know for this mission.”

Neal blinks. “You realize I’m flying the ship, right?” he asks. “I’m flying a ship _right now_. Kind of hard to do both at the same time.”

“It’s all being recorded. He can listen to it later,” says Will, waving a hand.

Kendra leans over to Neal in the pilot’s chair. “Do you think the reason Maggie and Jim were so excited about having the meeting via video conference is that both of them are wearing pajama pants?” Neal looks at the video screen and back at Kendra. “What, you think it’s not obvious?”

“Earth to everyone!” declares Mac. Everyone stops talking and looks at her. “Oh, come on. That was funny.” She sighs. “Will and I take the first shift. Don and Elliot will take the second shift, and so on. We’ll be doing everything from the ship because we’re not exactly equipped for different atmospheres, so make yourselves comfortable. If anything goes wrong, Neal gets us out of here. Kendra, you’re on secondary communications with Earth. We have two translators on board, but go to Sloan with your questions first. I don’t want there to be any kind of confusion—this is still a _News Night_ operation.”

“Just in outer space,” quips Will. “What is the world coming to?”

“The future,” says Don.

“Anyone who didn’t want to be on the mission is welcome to leave. I hear space is a pretty big place, but you’re welcome to walk home, Will,” says Mac.

“Well, technically—”

“ _Neal_.”

“No offense, but is there any way the rest of the background information can be summed up in a document or something?” asks Elliot. “I need to vid my family before they go to bed, and I think first shift needs to sleep soon.”

“Please _read through_ the packets,” says Sloan. “We wouldn’t have had to have the briefing in the first place if everyone hadn’t read it beforehand.”

“Still driving the ship,” Neal reminds her.

“I mean, we’re seven hours away. You can’t put it on autopilot or something?”

“Do you want to fly the ship?”

“Everyone get some sleep,” says Will loudly. “Get some sleep. Read the packets. Kendra’s on coffee duty in the morning, so grab some if you need it. Someone on Earth’s lost their mind and wanted us to be second contact representatives, so try to represent the best of Earth. Or something.”

* * *

The bedrooms on the ship are damn small (and that's saying something, because he hasn't been so conscious of accidentally hitting things since he toured colonial farmhouses as a child) NASA’s apparently going cheap on the intergalactization front. There’s no appropriate air ventilation program for his cigar, so Will settles for a nightcap, looking over the information packet one last time. This race, the Rngalyane ( _ren-yat-lay-ah-nay_ —he’s rehearsed this several times), has a tonal language with exact pitches. They practically sing to each other. The right word not only has to be said, but it has to be said in a pleasing manner. A race of perfect pitch snobs. What a hassle.

He calls Mac. Pages. Buzzes. Whatever the hell they call it.

“You realize I’m in the room next-door to you.”

“I didn’t want to wake you up by knocking on the door. A comm beep is a little nicer.”

He hears Mac’s sigh on the other line and knows he’s won this one. “You still woke me up.”

“I have no idea how we’re going to get these people.”

Mac sighs, a different sigh, like she’s been waiting for him to say this to her. “We’ll feel them out tomorrow.”

“The faster we do this, the faster we can go home.”

“These beds are _not_ tiny.”

“Not for your little bird frame.”

“They’re a little like war bunks, and I'm really not that little.”

“Mac—”

“It’s going to be fine. Though I swear, if you wake me up again tonight—”

“No, finish that sentence. Please.”

“I can’t believe they’re not letting us share rooms. Cheapskates.”

“Finish that sentence.”

“We can’t share a bed. Your back.”

“You’re telling me that you spent three years covering the Moon uprising, and you don’t know how to share one of these bunks?”

"Your knee. Your shoulder." Mac laughs. “Not sure you can handle it.”

“We’ll make it work.”

They sleep all the way through the night, war bunk beds be damned.

* * *

The first twelve hours go pretty smoothly, which is why Mac’s not surprised at all when the next wake-up call comes three hours into her sleep. What surprises her is that it’s Sloan and that she comes directly to her room.

“Come in,” says Mac, confused.

“No, I’ll stay right here,” says Sloan. “We don’t have time. The Rngalyane are definitely smuggling people. There are smuggled beings on their ship right now. Arrogant bastards.”

Mackenzie takes the sweatshirt she keeps by the door and steps outside. “The translators told you that?”

Sloan walks with her in the hallway. “No, not exactly. The term they used is vague. It translates as goods, but with the right inflection, it insinuates that the cargo is alive. Said in a three-four rhythm, it heavily implies that they’re people—or, well, the term they use for the race is Fyatloo, but that’s less relevant.”

“Why didn’t they catch it in the translation?”

“The Rngalyane never say anything directly. It’s the kind of thing only a native speaker would catch."

“Oh—I never thought—”

Sloan stiffens. “I’m not Rngalyanea, but my parents were among the first groups of explorers to live and travel beyond the Milky Way. I grew up out here, and that was one of the common languages we spoke, but that’s not the kind of thing you put on a job application because you’re never sure how Earth-based organizations are going to take that kind of thing,” Sloan says quickly. She stops short of the room to the communications room and looks at Mac.

“Um, alright, wake everyone up—make sure you get Jim and Maggie too—and send them to the conference room. We’ll meet there. I’ll tell Don to stand by with instructions.” Sloan nods and begins walking down the hallway. “And Sloan?”

Sloan turns around. “Yes?”

“If you’re at _News Night_ , you’re with family. Ask me, ask Will, ask anyone. We’ll all tell you the same thing, and we’ll mean it.”

“Thanks, Mac.”

* * *

“ _Fuckers_ ,” says Will. “They’ve got the people on the ship right in front of us.”

“It makes you think how deep this problem goes,” says Sloan.

“They’ve agreed to operate under intergalactic laws. If they’ve violated those laws, the authorities need to deal with them,” says Will.

“If we bring up the translation error, they’ll deny it, say that it’s a translation problem. We’re just a communications squad. We’d need another few days to get another ship out here, one with law enforcement authority, and it’d be too easy for them to get the people out on a supply ship, which they’d need—”

“We’d all need to resupplied,” says Mac.

“The space officers we have on board aren’t enough?” asks Jim.

“They’d need to complete a full sweep of their ship,” says Neal. “That ship is huge, probably on purpose.”

“So we can’t do anything,” says Sloan, chin raised.

“We can,” says Neal. “We can board their ship ourselves—”

“Are you _crazy_ —”

“Maggie!”

“Those are _people_ in that ship.”

“We know next to nothing about the layout. We barely even know these people. Dammit, it’s like they knew. It’s like they knew we needed this trade agreement so badly that they could almost _parade_ these people in front of us.”

“Neal.”

Will whistles then, loud and piercing. Everyone stops talking.

Then they start again.

“Wow, seriously?”

“Do you know how tiny this pilot’s cabin is? Like why don’t you kill our remaining advantages against these people—we definitely need _hearing_.”

“Yeah, Will—that killed all the audio to the feed. I don’t know what you said right before or right after—”

“ _If we’re all quite done_ ,” says Mac. Everyone falls silent again. “This is supposed to be a productive meeting. Let’s be productive. Now, the person who knows most about space is Neal, but the person who knows most about this race is Sloan. Sloan, what did you mean when you said that we definitely need hearing?”

“It’s a musical language,” says Sloan. “They use a different scale than we do, but there are exact pitches and rhythms you have to hit for the meanings to get across. It’s not like we have relative pitches. They’re exact pitches.”

“And you have perfect pitch,” says Mac. “Most humans don’t.”

Sloan shakes her head. “I don’t have musical talent at all—I can just hear things. Again, it’s not something you want to bring up in everyday conversation.”

“If we were able to lead them into somehow admitting what they’ve done on the air, on record, then that would be enough to justify sending for help,” says Mac.

“We’d still need time for them to get here,” Will reminds her.

“We can alert Jim and Maggie to get help over here while we stall for time.”

“Okay,” says Don, rubbing his eyes. “That sounds great, but we don’t even know what we’re trying to get them to admit. We can’t just stab around in the dark, even if Sloan’s talented.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”

Mac falls silent and looks down at the ground.

Will clears his throat. “Everyone, would you mind doing what Mac’s doing right now?”

“Sorry?” asks Elliot.

“Everyone look down at the floor,” says Will. “Something interesting there. Nothing to see up here. Maggie, Jim, would you mind re-calibrating your video feed? I think something’s sounding a little funny.”

“The feed sounds fine,” says Maggie.

“Uh, yeah,” stammers Jim. “I’m getting a little bit of a waver over here—just wait a couple minutes. I’ll get it right back up.”

* * *

“What the hell was that?” Maggie asks.

“Special legislation for space,” says Jim. “Sound doesn’t mean as much in a trial dealing with space as sight—space messes sound up sometimes. You can mishear something, but if you see something—that’s something that the truth serums are going to find.”

“Is it going to come to that?” Maggie asks quietly.

“Will thinks so,” says Jim, “so we do too.”

“What do we do when we tune back in?”

“We go for help,” says Jim. “Then, we wait. We’ll be here for a really long time.”

“Longer than before,” says Maggie. Jim nods. “So I’ll order us some takeout. We can watch a movie.” He smiles at that, and it makes her smile too.

“We can watch a lot of movies,” says Jim.

* * *

Slowly, everyone’s heads drop. Don closes his eyes.

“Neal,” says Will quietly.

“This ship doesn’t have auto-pilot,” he says. “I can’t leave it running, especially if there’s a chance that we’ll need to get away quickly."

“Could we survive a while without it?”

“Yes,” whispers Neal.

“Um, excuse me,” says Kendra. “This spill on the floor is all over my shoes, and it’s kind of hard to look up because this cabin’s so small and we’re so cramped, but I wanted to let you know that in the event that Neal couldn’t fly, I could.” There’s a beat for silence. Mac’s head twitches but doesn’t come up. “It wouldn’t make sense to only have one able pilot on staff.”

“I can help you clean off your shoes, Kendra,” says Neal. “You can just come over here.”

Kendra nods, and head still bowed, begins to move across the room.

“They’re going to be cognizant about tone, pitch, everything,” says Sloan. “Wording is going to be hard.

“A war of words,” says Mac. “We’re a bunch of _journalists_ —”

“Former journalists,” says Don. “Communication specialists.”

“You’re right,” says Mac. “We’re not qualified to do this at all.” She looks up, the only one who’s looking up besides Will at this point, and looks him square in the eye. “It’s not like we used to be the best or anything.” She pauses. “Are we done feeling sorry for ourselves?”

“Let’s get to work,” says Will.

* * *

Towards the end of the stall period (which isn’t that hard, really—all they have to do is fake a couple of system breakdowns, a few hiccups in translation, and beg multiple bathroom trips because of the coffee that they’re all drinking), Will says that they have to take a call from Earth, which gains him a few minutes with just Mac in his ear.

“I’m feeling fine,” he tells her before she has a chance to ask. “I’m not _that_ old.”

“I wasn’t going to ask you how you were feeling,” says Mac. “I was going to ask you if you and Sloan know what you’re going to do.”

“The stalling was the hard part,” says Will.

“Yes,” says Mac. “I’m glad you managed to say that, finally. It’s not like I had to remind you of it every ten minutes or so.”

“I hate talking in circles, and it’s even worse when there’s a good chance that they’re going to know that about me.”

“You’re doing fine, and yes, it was every ten minutes. On the dot. I kept a timer.”

Will rolls his eyes. “Are you alright?”

“I’ll be less alright if they figure this out and come after us. I’m not rushing to go back to war, Will.”

“We’ll keep the war right here. No guns, just words. We’re good at this.”

He can’t see her smile, but he can hear it in her voice. Maybe he’s getting better at this language thing after all. “I never said we weren’t.”

* * *

They remain in their work clothes but have loosened the guidelines of “work clothes.” They’re both in baggy sweatshirts and jeans now. They’ve kicked off their shoes in favor of soft socks. They sleep in shifts, but they’re both awake now, and chip bags and takeout drones litter the room as they pretend that they aren’t leaning against each other under the blanket they’re sharing.

“So they’re blind, not deaf. They have super hearing,” says Maggie. It’s about the fourth time, but she’s nervous, and it’s developed a little bit of familiarity now, which is nice because people really didn’t know what was going to happen these days, and situations like this only amplified the uncertainty.

“It’s kind of like echolocation,” says Jim.

“But not,” says Maggie, “but it kind of is because they have zero gravity on the ship and Neal can get through undetected as long as he doesn’t—touch anything too much?”

“Yep.”

“How is he going to do that?”

Jim laughs. “It’s _Neal.”_

* * *

Don enters the reserve comm room where Sloan sits, talking quietly into equipment that he’s not familiar with, but he can tell it was patched together quickly, lacking the sleek, clean lines of the equipment he’s been working with during this assignment.

He tries to be quiet and not startle her, placing the flat of his hand on her shoulder instead of tapping her, but she jumps anyway.

“Don’t say anything,” he whispers hastily, sliding a plate of banana waffles in front of her, then squeezing her shoulder. “They didn’t have chocolate.”

She nods and doesn’t turn around. Instead she scribbles on a piece of paper. _Thx._ She slides it over to him. “Neal, this is very important. Is the room shaped like a circle, or does it have edges?” She pauses. “How many edges does it have?” She scribbles again and slides the paper to Don. This time, he runs into the next room.

 _We’ve got them_.

* * *

They expect them to attack. They don’t expect them to run, and this is how the whole team learns that while Neal’s area of expertise is intelligence and defense, hers is straight-up speed.

They don’t have near the speed that the Rngalyane ship does, but Kendra’s good at making do with what she has, and she chases them in a way that doesn’t mean _catching up_ , but when the authorities arrive about six hours later, she’s made them fly in a way that leaves their trail bright as day (so to speak) across the sky.

Earth offers their own reserve pilot, but Kendra insists on piloting all the way home (the less the authorities know about Neal’s involvement, the better, and as far as everyone else is concerned Kendra’s been flying this whole time (they weren’t that rigorous with the ship roles beforehand—this was supposed to be a routine, boring mission).

They don’t know what’s going to happen now. They just know that everything's changed. They'll deal with the rest of it when they get some sleep.

But, the ship’s still flying (they’re going to be home even sooner because of Kendra). Elliot’s telling his family that he’s going to be home soon. Don and Sloan sit down for a breakfast-as-dinner meal. Jim and Maggie are relieved (everyone ignores the fact that the room they’re in is practically a nervous wreck in and of itself because they’re sitting so close together and _fucking finally, it was about time_ ). Leona’s bringing everyone back diamonds from the planet, and Will and Mac are asleep. Finally.

Well, they’re in bed at least. Two beds pushed together.

“Maybe they didn’t tell us that the beds were so easy to move because they knew we’d stay up all night talking,” says Will.

“Talking was their concern,” Mac says idly.

“That’s what we’ve been doing this whole time, and you _knew_ that these beds were mobile. You kept it to yourself.”

“It was cute, you asking me over. You’re not completely a dinosaur, you know."

“Wow.”

“Don’t act like you weren’t worried about it—our whole team, together but aging. Space springing up all around us. Our jobs slowly becoming obsolete.”

“The space was always there.”

She tuts. “Thanks, Neal.”

“You are right though. There may be hope for us yet.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, we’re going to sleep. Look out the window.”

“That’s not sleeping.”

“Stars.” She protests just a little but rolls over.

It’s really something.


End file.
